To paraphrase a well known quote: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.” Two of my friends are out of work and it seems to be a long term deal. Both are highly qualified and experienced. I have personally lost a great night job I held for years and have not been called in to work since August, 2008. How are you and your acquaintances doing these days?

Opportunity in America starts with a job. Without one, there is no security, no earnings or savings, and no satisfaction and self-esteem of contributing to ones future or society. Official unemployment stands at 9.5% and if those who are under employed are added in, it becomes over 17%. Here is a short clip about how onerous regulations hurt the economy. It only touches on a couple of the several items mentioned below:

Do we want our jobs back? – YES! OK, just how can this goal be accomplished?

Business creates new jobs when it expands. Most large firms are sitting on their cash because they are uncertain of the future. In fact – several big companies that have announced expansion plans have been savaged by the stock market recently instead of rewarded. Investors are not confident that growing business is a smart move at this time.

Small business is fighting the combined headwinds of low demand, burgeoning new regulations, and great difficulty obtaining financing. This sector of the economy which traditionally creates the most jobs is stalled.

The Obama Administration has passed or is pushing legislation that has emasculated businesses large and small, putting great fear into owners and investors and hampering economic recovery. If we want our jobs back, these monstrous legislative overreaches must be rolled back. Here they are:

$867 Billion Stimulus: This program borrows nearly a Trillion Dollars from China and others against the future earnings of all Americans. It was promised as a method to initiate “shovel ready” infrastructure work. Instead most has been spent on the state level preserving government jobs.

Health Care: This massive takeover of 1/6 of the entire economy has created unintended consequences of huge proportions. It threatens to crush small businesses’ health plans and drive workers into the government system. The true long term costs to both business and individuals cannot be accurately calculated, and the implied costs were buried deep in the overall effort to pass the Bill.

Financial regulation: The Dodd / Frank legislation supposedly regulates financial practices while ignoring completely the malfeasance at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that contributed so greatly to the 2008 meltdown. Draconian rules and regulations will trickle down to the smallest mom & pop business and stifle initiative and productivity with reams of reporting requirements, paperwork, and red tape.

Cap & Trade legislation: Currently passed in the House and stalled in the Senate, whispers have it that a lame duck session of congress after the November election may pass it in the Senate anyway. This myopic and hysterical “solution” to a problem that has not been proven as fact would saddle business with huge energy cost increases. It would drive literally millions of American jobs overseas in a pen stroke.

Expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts: John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush all lowered taxes in the face of a recession. All three saw a spurt in economic growth and jobs as a result. The Obama Administration intends to raise taxes at the end of 2010 by allowing the current cuts to expire. Raising taxes punishes investment, expansion, success, and hiring. This scheme is a recipe for prolonging the worst recession in 75 years.

The Obama Administration has caused more damage to the US economy in 18 months than Jimmy Carter managed in 4 years. The only way to have a prayer of turning things around for the better is to change Congress this year so opponents can block funding and implementation of some of the more destructive aspects of the Obama agenda.

For you, your friends, your neighbors, and your children: THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR LIFETIMES.

According to George Orwell: “Some ideas are so bad, only a highly intelligent person could believe in them.” It is becoming vastly apparent that the Obama Administration – from the President on down are indeed “highly intelligent” people. In addition, they seem to be about as tone deaf as a bucket of dirt. How and why these folks come up with the cockamamie plans and policies they do is indeed a mystery.

Long anticipated, the Department of Justice is suing Arizona over the recent law regarding illegal immigration. The Administration has turned a deliberate blind eye toward actually securing the border – for blatant political reasons. In absolute desperation, Arizona makes a law that enables local law enforcement to verify and turn illegals over to the federal agencies. Instead of taking the positive actions of improving the border situation, Obama condemns the law and initiates legal action against the state.

Between 60 and 70% of Americans support Arizona’s efforts to assist in enforcing federal law. By blatant groveling for a few percentage points of the Latino vote, the Administration is insulting every American citizen, native born or immigrant. If this were an isolated incident – a random misreading of the mood of the electorate – it could be forgiven. Unfortunately and infuriatingly, it is only the latest affront to the will of the majority of Americans.

This morning, another truly odiferous red herring landed in the news. Obama never liked NASA or the Space Program. He basically emasculated it by dumping further Moon trip preparation, ignoring Mars planning, and insisting that the Space Shuttle program not be extended. He wants the money for “free stuff” that buys votes. Left with a huge organization with little purpose ready to start handing out pink slips, Obama instructs the Director of NASA to initiate a new mission. Get ready.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Here is a short clip that accurately describes this scheme:

What kind of warped world view would motivate a US President to task the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with wet nursing and burping a sector of the world that quit contributing to scientific advancement a thousand years ago? “Daft” is about the best explanation.

These two examples are just what happened today! Such foolishness has been emerging from the White House for 17 months – Stimulus, Health Care, Cap & Trade, Close Gitmo, terrorist trials in New York, abject incompetence on the Gulf oil spill, multi trillion dollar deficits, automaker bailouts, foreign policy gaffes – the list goes on. The only way to slow this acid bath of loopy, half baked, dangerous policies and actions is to vote this November.

It’s late June. School let out a couple weeks ago, the Little League season is in full swing; the days are warm and long. Months of delivering newspapers at five in the morning is about to pay off. The fireworks stands just opened!

Carefully counting out a stack of dollar bills from the drawer, I set out on a well used Schwinn to purchase my treasure – bottle rockets, Zebra firecrackers, whistling chasers, aerial flash bombs, and those wonderful 2” salutes. Back in the neighborhood, boys get together to compare their purchases, trade this for that, and prepare to do some serious pre-holiday testing.

We prefer balloon sticks to punks because we can puff on them and it looks like we are smoking; drawing stares from the adults as they drive by. We range the streets and blocks for hours enjoying the dull thump of a salute dropped down a manhole cover or a bottle rocket launched at a tree full of starlings. No dog or cat is safe from a good scare should we spy it skulking across the road or in a bush. An occasional harsh word from a resident sends us a half block away to resume our ecstasy. By the time the real Independence Day arrives, we are down to about 1/3 of our stock.

Ike is President, the nation is at peace, Detroit is humming and the tailfins get more ostentatious every year. We can hardly wait to become teenagers and dress up to apply for an appearance on American Bandstand. We want to join the Army or Navy the minute we finish high school so we can learn to parachute or ride in a submarine.

Enjoy this catchy little tune from the time that made the Top 40 in both 1958 and 1962 by the same group – The Jamies:

Take a few minutes and see a video analogy of big government and where we will all be if President Obama continues to get his way:

Watch the debt climb.

See the bureaucrats running their departments.

Observe the few trying to prevent the disaster.

Note the apathy among the dedicated workers.

Witness the tipping point, and the unstoppable aftermath.

Notice the businessmen, stripped of their dignity, thrown into the maw.

Watch how the workers are tossed in immediately after.

Whose children are these – yours, mine, or will they be our grandchildren?

Stalin culled out the thinkers and entrepreneurs and worked them to death in the Gulags. Mao selected the landlords, business owners, and intellectuals and put a bullet in the back of their necks. Obama is not a dictator, and does not have the power to become one. His kinder, gentler way of crippling a free economy is to ostracize, criticize, tax, regulate, and marginalize those who create jobs and write the paychecks.

“Spreading the wealth around” will soon lead to no more wealth to spread around.